Happy Birthday, Carina Press!

In celebration of our one year anniversary, I asked as many of our Harlequin team members and Carina Press freelance editors as possible to write a short blog post, talking about what the past year or so has been like for them, working on Carina Press. I deliberately didn't provide any direction other than that, because I wanted to see what people came up with, in the spirit of Carina's 1st anniversary. I was so pleased when I saw what they'd all come up with, and had to say (and some of these posts made me just a little teary)! I hope you enjoy the post, and look for your opportunity to win a Carina Press book at the bottom of this post. ~Angela James

Dana Grimaldi is a member of the Carina Press acquisitions team. She loves to read sci-fi, fantasy, romance, mystery, steampunk, paranormal and any medley of these genres

Sometimes, when you start a new job, you find out that it comes with unfortunate surprises. For instance, sometimes you’re a camp counselor on your first overnight camping trip…in the middle of a thunderstorm. And then, when you wake the campers in the middle of the night so you can move the tents under a shelter, you discover that the shelter you’re trying to use is already occupied…by bats.

But other times, if you’re lucky, those surprises can be amazing. When I started working as the copy editor for Harlequin.com, the company was preparing to launch Harlequin’s digital-first imprint, Carina Press. Even though my job description didn’t say anything about Carina, it wasn’t long before I was copy editing back cover copy, pamphlets and author bios for Carina Press, too. I was lucky enough to find myself at the right place during a very exciting time. Before long, I joined the acquisitions team.

Right from the start, I knew this was an amazing opportunity. Being on the acquisitions team is like being part of the best book club ever. Every week, I get the chance to sit down with some of the smartest, funniest, most interesting women I’ve ever worked with and talk about something I love: books. But the most exciting part is that when I read a book, I get to pass on my thoughts and comments to the book’s editor.

Working on the acquisitions team has even changed the way I read. I’d never really considered getting an eReader. I was perfectly happy reading print books. I didn’t even call them print books; they were just books. But when I joined the acquisitions team, I realized very quickly that I’d need to find myself an eReader—there are no hard copy manuscripts at a digital-first publisher! I asked around—there was no shortage of opinions about eReaders here—and eventually decided to get a Kindle and a lighted case. The Kindle is really easy to use and the reading light doesn’t give me forehead crease marks like the light I use for print books.

Working for Carina Press has also expanded the types of books I read. I’ve always read a pretty wide variety of fiction, but even though I’ve read and loved fantasy books, I’d never read urban fantasy. Even though I love time travel stories, historical books and science fiction, I’d never even heard of steampunk. I found out that I love both these genres.

Looking forward to the upcoming year, I’m excited to continue reading books in new genres by fresh new voices. Hopefully this year will bring more good surprises—involving books—rather than not-so-good surprises—involving bats.

To celebrate Carina's one-year anniversary of publishing books, we're giving away some prizes. Today, on each of the nineteen blogs our team members are featured on, we're giving away a download of a Carina Press book to one random winner (that's nineteen total winners!) All you need to do to be entered to win is comment on this post. You can enter to win on all nineteen posts. In addition, on the Carina Press blog, we're giving away a grand prize of a Kobo ereader and 12 Carina Press books of the winner's choice. Visit the Carina Press blog to enter to win, and to see links to all 19 of today's blog posts.

And a sincere thank you from all of us, to our readers and authors, for making Carina Press's first year a success!